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On the boards: Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest

Dallas Ensing, a student at Lucas secondary school plays Algernon Moncrieff, and Blyth Academy student Maya Wong plays Cecily Cardew in the 2014 Spring High School Project The Importance of Being Earnest on at the Grand Theatre’s McManus Studio until Saturday. (Kara James/Special to QMI Agency)

The Play: Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, a comedy that satirizes the social conventions of late Victorian London. The plot centres around two young gentlemen living in 1890s England who use the same pseudonym, Earnest, while courting a woman and attempting to escape social obligations. The play evaluates institutions such as marriage, skewering Victorian high society. This is considered by many to be Wilde’s best work; it is certainly his most popular. After the show first opened, Wilde’s homosexuality was exposed and he was jailed, the show closing after 86 performances despite the rave reviews.

The Show: Presented by the Grand Theatre for the theatre’s 2014 Spring High School Project, directed by Jamie Dunsdon.

The Quote: It’s a beautiful script, and Wilde’s wit is really sharp. It’s also challenging because the language is embedded with these witty aphorisms that, after a few months of rehearsal, you forget are funny. Eventually, they just become part of the world of the play, which is great for character work, but a challenge for comedic timing. It will be such a relief to finally have an audience providing that half of the experience. One of my favourite things about the story is that despite Wilde’s mocking and satire, we really fall in love with the characters. Yes, they’re egotistical, ignorant, vain, and deceitful — and we get to laugh at that — but we also get to see inside of their hearts and, by the end, we really care about what happens to them. It’s a triumph that Wilde is even able to pull it off.